Robert Baer Email & Phone Number

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

I currently provide strategic consulting, solution architecture, contract CIO and systems engineer services to clients, with a majority of the last five years with clients needing strong merger and acquisition experience. Services include the review, development and management of IT strategy, IT processes, auditing and remediation of security, network health and Microsoft licensing requirements. This assistance can lead to remediation with best practice solutions. Areas of opportunity for cost savings and efficiencies include infrastructure consolidation, software modernization, server virtualization, application outsourcing and cloud strategies. I am also a capable manager of people, IT department personnel structuring and a strong stakeholder communicator.My technical expertise includes architecture of application environments and network, migration and support of Microsoft domain environments located on-premise, cloud-based in Azure, or a hybrid. Migration and consolidation strategies related to all systems in mergers and acquisitions. Other common engagements involve Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint, MS Teams, Hyper-V/VMware virtualizations, data security, and network storage. I can also provide day-to-day client support and maintenance of client office and datacenter infrastructures.RECENT WORKCHILDREN’S HOSPITAL MINNESOTAProvided governance strategy and architecture for several digital transformation initiatives to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. Led a five person team in the planning and execution of a 130 department (30TB) data migration to SharePoint Online.HUNTINGTON NATIONAL BANK / TCF BANKHired to assist in various transition projects through two acquisitions. Executed a plan for migrating 32TB of data from file servers to cloud solutions and other acquisition and IT transformation projects.

Oakdale, Minnesota

BT (formerly British Telecom) is a global Fortune 500 company and Microsoft Gold Partner. As a member of BT’s Enterprise Microsoft practice, I served in a dual-role as the Microsoft Practice Manager for Microsoft’s North Central District, and later as Senior Consultant performing business value justifications for Microsoft solutions, and managing and participating in large professional services engagements.

Maple Grove, Mn

I operated as a hands-on Director of IT to manage and mentor the department’s staff, build infrastructure, manage budgets and implement the senior leadership strategy.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Added Touch IT was my first consulting firm providing professional services to the small and midsize business market. Demonstrating expertise in the leading IT solutions and best practices of the time to build a practice of 30 active clients. As a Microsoft Partner, our successful engagements led to managed services contracts and increased revenue growth. In 2008 I sold Added Touch IT to pursue other opportunities.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Director and manager of the Western US WAN infrastructure, communication systems and physical security.• Created and managed a $2 million IT budget with involvement in the total overall budget of $5 million.• Managed an 8-person support team located in our local and regional offices.• Hands-on leadership role involved in the administration and systems management of the corporate network. It included 150+ Windows Servers providing services to 1200 clients in eight US and global locations.• Led a complex design of a new Active Directory forest/domain infrastructure.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Supported the systems on the LAN/WAN with network administration and desktop support for five office locations in Minneapolis and Chicago for 400+ employees.• Was a member of Duke Realty’s Acquisition Team, supporting an aggressive real estate acquisition model; we provided rapid network conversions to newly acquired properties with complete rip-and-replace of the property’s existing LAN/WAN infrastructure and client systems.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area